No One is Naturally Evil

You has written some stuff about how some people are
naturally evil, and that there is no hope of trying to free
people with the same views as Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab
az-Zarqawi from Islam, as they are evil.

Well, here you have me. As you might know, I am an ex-Muslim (I
was a convert). I was a Salafi Jihadi. No, of course I wasn't a
Mujahid who fought in Jihad, but I admired the Taliban, al-Qaeda
and similar. I dreamed of participating in Jihad, of becoming a
Mujahid. I was active on Jihadi forums.

Whenever it dropped onto my brain that the Beslan school
massacre, the 9/11 attacks, the suicide bombings in Iraq,
Muhammed's massacre of the Jews etc etc were wrong, I smothered
these thoughts. Most of the Muslims I hanged with were Saudi
Salafis, i.e they opposed al-Qaeda and supported the Saudi
government. They said that the Saudi government had its faults,
but that they are not Murtadun (apostates) as al-Qaeda and
like-minded people say. I can almost guarantee you that had I
posted on this forum when I was a Muslim, you would never have
trusted me when I had later left Islam.

When I look back at my forum posts as a Muslim, whether it is
about Jihad, science, politics or any other subject, I see that
they in many cases are plainly stupid. And of course now I am
against killing of civilians. I think that all living beings,
humans as well as plants and animals, deserve respect (of course
there is a limit to that, for example when an animal, human or
plant threaten another living being, you know what I mean, don't
you?) and that no unnecessary suffering should be inflicted on
them.

Now I fully realize that the Islamic atrocities are wrong, but
back then I approved of them. Keep in mind that there were even
Salafi Jihadis who opposed the Beslan school massacre. Obviously
there were enough of them to motivate those who approved of it to
write a book explaining why the Beslan school massacre was
Islamically allowed. Yet, I wasn't among those who opposed it.

So how do I fit into this good-evil people thingy? Am I
naturally evil but has decided to be good, or am I naturally good
but became evil to then be good again? Mind you, the reason I
abandoned Islam was not because of Muhammed's evil deeds, but
because there was no credible evidence of Islam being true (I
struggled for months with that, back then I really wanted Islam to
be true, I searched allover the Internet for credible evidence).

Best regards!

Firawn

Ali Sina's response to Firwan:

Dear Firwan,

I can only say one thing and that is I was wrong when I said some
people are naturally evil. Frankly I know that people are not born
naturally evil. When I made that remark I made it out of anger and
did not really mean it.

Humans are not born evil. They become evil because of external
influences. All children are born pure and innocent. What makes
some to gravitate to evil is their upbringing and then the
doctrines that they espouse.

If you study the childhood of all the great monsters of history,
such as Hitler, Saddam, Stalin, Mao, Muhammad, Jim Jones, Charles
Manson, Joseph Kony, etc, you’ll see they all had one thing in
common. They all had either loveless or too permissive childhoods.
These are the main factors that make some people narcissists.
Narcissism is a terrible emotional disorder. Not all narcissists
become famous leaders, but all of them destroy anything that is in
their way. Con artists and pathological liars are often
narcissists. Unfortunately there are plenty of narcissists in the
world. You certainly know a few of them or maybe you are one of
them. Narcissism can be prevented, but I am not aware if it can be
cured. Not all those children who have been abused grow up to
become narcissists. However, all those who become narcissists have
been abused in one way or another in their childhood.

Narcissists can be truly evil. They lack conscience, and when you
lack conscience you are not a full human being. Narcissists seems
to be doomed to suffer and make others suffer for the rest of
their lives. They must hurt and destroy in order to feel alive.
These words can be offensive to narcissists but they have the
ability to feel great in a second. Narcissists may think of
suicide or talk about it to gain sympathy but they never do it. (I
must add unfortunately) They can destroy the world, but not their
exalted self. Such a self is too important to be destroyed.

Are they naturally evil? No! They are victims of their faulty
childhood upbringings. They were once innocent children who were
humiliated, or conversely, their overly permissive parents did not
discipline them and they grew up becoming boundary breakers and
misfits.

So you are right and I was wrong. No one is naturally evil. People
become evil through faulty upbringing and by following evil
doctrines.

What will happen if you follow a narcissist and adopt his
worldviews? You enter in his bubble world and become a narcissist
by extension. You stop using your own conscience and let him
dictate his values on you. When a large number of people follow a
narcissist blindly, the result can be catastrophic. This happened
in Germany when the majority of the good Germans, fell prey to the
big lies of a narcissist. The result was unspeakable atrocities
that they committed and 55 million deaths. Once the influence of
Hitler was removed, the Germans proved to be as good people as
anyone else.

What makes some Muslims terrorists and beastly is their religious
indoctrination. No one is naturally evil. I believe every human
being is born with the potential to become a saint. It is what
happens to us along the way and the choices that we make that make
us different.

At any time we can change our lives and decide to become a saint.
Essentially there is no difference between a saint and a criminal.
Both of them can make wrong choices and good choices in every
moment of their lives and actually they do. The saint however
makes more good choices, and the criminal makes more bad choices.
That is the only difference. To become a saint, all you have to do
is decide to do good most of the times. Everyone can do that,
therefore everyone is a potential saint.

We are making choices every minute of our lives. To become a good
human, all we have to do is ask ourselves, does this thing that I
am going to do hurt anyone? If the answer is yes then don’t do it.
It’s that simple. Once you do that, you are on your way to
sainthood.

I am glad that you left your Jihadi thinking and now are working
to enlighten others. You are a living testimony to the fact that
love is more powerful than hate and truth is more potent than
lies. Yes, we can win this war and avert a major catastrophe if we
speak the truth and genuinely love the Muslims, seeing them as
victims who need to be rescued rather than as enemies who have to
be destroyed.

I took the liberty to publish this exchange because I want others
witness also the power of truth and instead of thinking of Muslims
as naturally evil, think of them as victims who need to be
rescued.

Most of the Muslims who leave Islam do not announce it. It is
important that they do. One of the biggest lies that keep Muslims
hooked is the lie that Islam is the fastest growing religion.
Muslims are procreating faster than any other population, but this
does not mean that Islam is growing. The rate of exodus from Islam
is far greater than the same in other religions. The truth is that
Islam is the fastest dying religion.